


For What My Friends Must Think Of Me

by gaymingtrash



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Sasha Lives, Angst, Canon Typical Horror, Gen, Mind Control, Statement Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:15:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21538846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaymingtrash/pseuds/gaymingtrash
Summary: Statement of “Sasha James”, regarding her time in artefact storage. Statement taken direct from subject, July 2017.Archivist: For the record, you are claiming to be—?Subject: Sasha. Sasha James, assistant archivist for The Magnus Institute until I… disappeared, in July 2016.Please be mindful of the notes.
Relationships: Sasha James & Jonathan Sims
Comments: 12
Kudos: 69





	For What My Friends Must Think Of Me

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings: Spiders (brief/implied), Unreality, Bodysnatching (implied), Mind Control, Canon Typical Existential Dread, Body Horror (brief)
> 
> Set in roughly mid Season 3, spoils the end of Season 2

Statement of “Sasha James”, regarding her time in artefact storage. Statement taken direct from subject, July 2017.

Archivist: For the record, you are claiming to be—?

Subject: Sasha. Sasha James, assistant archivist for The Magnus Institute until I… disappeared, in July 2016.

Archivist: Why don’t you start at the beginning?

Subject: You were there when it started, Jon. You put your fist through a wall because you were angry. No, that’s not right, is it? That’s not you. The wall was broken, I know that’s true. There was a hole in the wall, and worms came pouring out of it. Right?

Archivist: You are correct that there was a hole. 

Subject: And you put the hole there.

Archivist: By accident, I was trying to kill a spider.

Subject: You and I hid from the worms, and then Tim tried to record over the tapes. And the tapes had the evidence of Jane Prentiss on, so I had to tackle him. And after that, he ran away, and I… found Elias, who said he wanted to kill you and Martin. He was planning to smother you both with CO2. I’d thrown the alarm to evacuate the building — after tackling Tim, before finding Elias — and that must have given him the idea, the cover, to kill you both while there were no witnesses. I suppose he must have thought that, had you escaped from Jane Prentiss, you knew too much? I knew he would have killed me too afterwards, so I ran, and I hid in the artefacts room.

But this... doesn’t feel right, does it?

I tackled Tim. I found Elias. I… lost Elias. I ended up in artefact storage. I remember I used to work in there, that’s a thing you could verify, or Martin or Tim could, so I know that has to be true or right. I remember that I… _hated_ working in artefact storage, actually. When I worked there, it gave me the creeps. It was always so cold in there, even when none of the rest of the office was, despite it being the height of summer. Condensation would bead up on every other window in this building from the humidity, but never in artefact storage. I assumed it was the air con for... preservation reasons, I don't know, but it just got my hackles up.

...Did I always hate everything, so much, Jon? I’ve spent so long since that day when Prentiss attacked running down every life decision that took me to that moment in artefact storage. Following each thread to their logical conclusions down to every cup of coffee and each stupid, clumsy conversation. I pick at every potential diversion, and at each intersection where there could have been another way it feels like — like my actions were always pushed by somebody else being cruel, or violent, or uncaring. Or by me, being hateful, or petty. And if I try to think in any other way it just makes my skin _itch_.

Archivist: Sasha was… it’s hard to say. I don’t remember her being hateful in that sort of way. 

Subject: “Sasha was”? What do you mean? 

Archivist: Tell me honestly, do you believe you are now and always have been Sasha James?

Subject: Yes, I— yes! Jon, I don’t understand. 

Archivist: After Jane Prentiss’s attack on the Institute, the Sasha we all knew… died, and was replaced by something else. A pretender.

[Crosstalk] Subject: But, I’m right here.

[Crosstalk] Archivist: The original Sasha was forgotten, and we were made to forget her. 

Archivist: I couldn’t recognise the original Sasha now even if I wanted to. And when the Stranger replaces people, they die.

Subject: No, no! Don’t just give up on me! You have to believe me! I was in artefact storage, and there was someone else in there. There was this noise, a horrible whistling, and I could feel it penetrating my eardrums, white-hot and sharp and flooding my vision from the inside out. I remember screaming, trying to keep it out, and then… I couldn’t scream, anymore. It was just me, and my memories. But they’re my memories, Jon, I remember them! It’s all I’ve been doing, for… nearly a year? Exploring every possible choice I could have made going as far back as being a little girl, and they all came back to that moment in artefact storage, like the root of a tree, or— 

Archivist: Or the centre of a web.

Subject: Yes. Like that. So, do you believe me? 

Archivist: I believe that _you_ believe you are Sasha. More than that, I… don’t know. What happened between then and now?

Subject: Honestly, I’m not sure. One day, I just… heard it, again. The horrible screeching whistle. And before I could even try to scream, I heard a man shouting, and another man, or something that maybe wasn’t a man, laughing. Then I was… alone, again. In artefact storage. My skin was throbbing and itching and I realised I was hiding in a corner that was covered, completely, in cobwebs. Tucked up in a tiny ball where nobody could see me.

You know when you wake up from a bad dream and you’re afraid to move, scared to try in case you find out that you can’t? I stayed like that for… too long, until it felt safe to even just wiggle my toes. It feels so silly to say it now, but I’d spent so long retracing all my steps that making new ones felt terrifying. 

It took me even longer to brush off the cobwebs. To reach out and touch them, even to touch my own skin and know it was there, and trust it would still be there afterwards. 

I couldn’t find Tim, or Martin, or you, when I left. You’d all abandoned me, I suppose. I couldn’t find anyone I recognised, or who recognised me. I wandered around the building until somebody said there was some kind of an emergency and we all had to leave. 

I haven’t been able to find… anybody, really, out there. My lease expired, I assume my things were given away or sold off. When I reached out to old friends and ex-flatmates I found myself blocked, if they even answered my messages at all. I tried calling my dad, he called me ‘sick’ and said if I ever contacted him again he’d call the police. I tried the front door in case mum was home, in case something was wrong, and she shut the door in my face. When I walked by just to try and see if everything was okay, I could see they’d changed the locks. Heavy-duty.

That was in February, and this is the first time I’ve been able to get back in the building here. To say I wanted to make a statement! To you, Jon. Because they said you’d gone missing, that you’d killed a man and ran away and that didn’t sound… right, that sounded like Jon-who-punches-a-wall, and that’s. That’s not real, I think. So I knew I couldn’t do this with anybody who was talking about that Jon. 

It’s been... a really hard few months. I assumed nobody I knew wanted to talk to me because they just _hated_ me, that I was the victim of an elaborate ghosting. It might sound awful to you, but it felt like perfect logic to me. I honestly don’t know that your Stranger explanation feels better.

Am I really… dead, to you all?

Archivist: Yes, you are. I am so, so, sorry, Sasha. 

Statement ends.

**Author's Note:**

> I have not yet finished season 4, or even read any other fic for The Magnus Archives but just... had to write this, apparently, so please don't spoil in the comments or tell me if this gets obviously tossed out by Future Knowledge. I just had Sasha Feelings, and those feelings were, apparently, what if she lives, but has an *awful* time of it.


End file.
